Fun Date Night In: “Chopped” at Home

There are some nights that you just want to do something completely out of the box and have a lot of creative fun. We recently got on a cooking kick and along with some cooking documentaries, we also started watching “Chopped”. For those who have never seen the show, it’s an intense competition between chefs of all kinds of backgrounds given odd ingredient combinations and a time limit. We thought, how much fun would it be to actually have a “Chopped” date night?

We set off to the store, got our ingredients and cooked up something that definitely would have never even crossed our minds. After judging our cooked results, we decided that if we were on the show, we would have been “Chopped”! After a fun night of creativity, tons of laughs and a couple of faux pas, we came to the conclusion that this was one of our favorite date nights and had to share the idea with you!

Instructions:

To start, you can either 1) download and print our shopping list for you and have your spouse print their list. We’ve made two separate lists to help keep the ingredients a secret until it’s time to cook them to make it more fun! OR 2) freestyle and follow the ingredient guidelines below.

Option 1: PDF Downloadable Grocery List

Option 2: Freestyle – Ingredient Guidelines

Make sure to pick up some oddities within these ingredient guidelines. The more interesting and non-traditional your basket of groceries are, the more fun the two of you will have collaborating and getting creative. Before shopping, watch “Chopped” to get some ideas (they have every past season on Netflix!) or check out the ingredient list by episode. You’ll notice that we cut the appetizer portion but added some ingredients to the entree and dessert portion to help make it easier and less time consuming.

Time to go to the grocery store together!

Split up and hit the aisles. We had so much fun running around the grocery store and hiding our ingredients from each other. Gather all of your groceries, make the purchase separately and meet at the car. Once you get home and share what each other purchased, it’s time to get creative and get to cooking!

Here are the rules for “‘Chopped’ at Home”:

In addition to your ingredients, you may use any additional ingredients you have in the house.

There is no time limit! Yes, you read that right. It’s date night! Cook, get creative with each other and most of all, have fun.

You must use all of the “Chopped” ingredients.

You may use the internet for cooking techniques (unless you are a professional chef, then no cheating!)

This is less about the competition, and more about getting out of date night ruts and having fun together. You win if you end up with something edible!

We hope you enjoy this date night idea as much as we did! Let us know what you came up with if you give this a try. Good luck!

We believe that dating after the wedding bells is as much a priority as dating before those rings were slipped on your fingers. Why? Because time develops intimacy. Committing to spending intentional time together with consistent date nights will transform your marriage.